Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.

This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1400 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.)

There is a detailedIndexarranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc.

In addition to this most articles have one or more labels at the bottom. Click one to go to similar persons. There is a full list of labels at the bottom of the page. There is also a search box at the top left. Enjoy exploring!

Films & Television

The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela. Dir: Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, scr: Olaf de Fleur Johannesson & Benedikt Jóhannesson, with Raquela Rios as herself and Valerie Einarsson as herself. Iceland/Philipines/France/Tahiland 80 mins 2008. Raquela gets from the Philipines to Iceland. Will she get to Paris?

Delores Kane, previously David Shayler MI5 whistle-blower, now transgender and living in a squat.

++ Nastaran Kolestani, an Iranian refugee in Idaho, pleaded guilty to killing her lover, and was sentenced to 18 years.

Viviane Namaste was awarded the 2009 Canadian Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights for her efforts to address the HIV prevention and treatment needs of trans people, bisexuals and the swingers community.

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A neighbourhood watch patrol in Tarapoto, Peru arrested a travestie and her companion, cut their hair, made them strip and then made them do military training exercises until they collapsed.

5 Filipino transvestites in Shanghai picked up men in bars, drugged and robbed them. They have been jailed for 9-13 years and then will be deported.

Internet

In April, Amazon removed GLBT books from many of its search features. After publicity, Amazon apologized and restored the status quo ante.

HBS International created pages on English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Simple Wikipedias. However they did not comply with Wikipedia standards in that they were mainly an advertisement with no historical references and made unsupported medical claims. The English version was also very rude about other the other 99% of transsexuals. The pages lasted only several weeks. They have been replaced by a Google Knol.

A new HBS blog is Trans-Fried Fluff, which is mainly written by “P.J. Schrödinger” who gives no profile or even a gender. It has concentrated on attacking the CAMH-Northwestern clique which of course could be in alliance with transgender unity, but its Links are exclusively to HBS sites. Earlier it claimed: “Wikipedia should be treated as the publishing arm of CAMH”

Southern Comfort Conference Wikipedia page was marked for deletion for being mainly an advertisement and having no historical references. It was rewritten with referenced sources to address these defects and is now okay.

Rebecca, an Australian Wikipedia administrator who had improved many articles on transgender topics to acknowledge the naturalness of transgender and removed abusive language, left Wikipedia for other projects.

Sweet and Sticky, one of the better spousal blogs, was removed.

Hoax killing. In June it was reported on several Trans sites that 18-year-old Raychel Wilson of New York had been viciously attacked and murdered. No New York media source carried the story. Under the name Rachel Roo, the supposed victim had participated on Laura’s Playground for a year before her ‘death’. She was an alter of Edeyn Blackeney.

++ The Transkids Blanchardian site, previously quiescent for a couple of years, was revived with a new essay by "Cloudy", who then started her own blog dedicated to the Blanchard binary.

Jasper Gregory hit various nerves with his advocacy of male femininity.

Dirty White Boi, a butch lesbian, continues her rant against trans men in particular.

Sophie Siedlberg, a major activist at OII, wrote a blog from August to October, writing from her intersex perspective.

Ron Gold, gay activist who was a major actor in getting homosexuality removed from the DSM, and who has spoken up against the biologistic apologism for homosexuality, that being gay is a moral choice, was invited by the editors of Bilerico to submit an essay. He submitted “No to the notion of Transgender” which was subsequently removed after an outcry. The original has been republished by Wayne Dynes. Ron then participated in a dialogue with Zoe Brain, and started to concede that there might be a biological cause (which is not the position that he took on homosexuality: logically he should assert that transgender is also a moral choice).

The Monash Gender Clinic was temporarily closed and its director, Dr Trudy Kennedy, forced to quit. This in response to reports into its workings in 2004 and 2006, and after eight patients have claimed to have been misdiagnosed. It re-opened in July with Dr Fintan Harte as director

The second International Experts' Meeting on HIV Prevention for MSM, WSW [men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women] and Transgenders met in Amsterdam in early November and issued a report in late December “Gender identity variance (transgenderism) should be reclassified from its current classification as a mental health disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and the World Health Organisation’s International Classification Of Diseases (ICD). Instead it should be classified as a medical condition. This would provide a diagnostic category in the ICD that would accommodate the needs of those gender identity variant people who require medical care for their condition, but without the stigma attached to mental disorder."

Equal marriage & civil unions

Argentina: city court judge permitted first gay marriage in Buenos Aires (civil unions have been in effect since 2002), but a higher court overruled it the day before the wedding. Update 28/12/09: Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre were married in Ushauaia, the capital of Argentina's Tierra del Fuego state, on 27/12/09.

Malaysia: Fatine Bahari met Ian Young of Derby, UK, in Kuala Lumpur. She travelled to the UK on a six-month tourist visa. They were joined in civil union. This became a media scandal in Malaysia, where it is claimed that she has shamed Malaysia. She has applied to the UK Border Agency to stay in the UK but is encountering bureaucratic problems.

Prince Edward Island: The Domestic Relations Act changed 29 pieces of provincial legislation to replace references to "man and woman" and "husband and wife" with gender-neutral terms, as required by the 2005 Canadian Civil Marriage Act.

Tennessee: Terri Jo Rittenberry had her marriage declared invalid, as gender change is not recognized.

Honduras: Following the US-supported coup, “There have been [other killings] as well, notably a rise in murders in the LGBT community since the coup. In particular, several transvestites have been recently killed in similarly gruesome ways. Human rights advocates report that ‘up to 18 gay and transgender men have been killed nationwide — as many as the five prior years — in the nearly six months since a political crisis rocked the nation.’ “ Full article here.

India: decriminalized homosexuality; Hijras may be listed as other, rather than male or female on electoral rolls.

Indonesia: Nadia Ilmira, a post-operative, applied to the Batang District Court to be legally recognized as a woman, and her petition was approved. However, the Indonesian Council of Ulema said that gender surgery in haram in Islam unless it is a medical necessity.

Iran: allowed the first marriage of a trans man; it continues to execute gay men.

Uganda: new bill that adds life imprisonment for consensual adult homosexuality and the death penalty if HIV+ or other party under 18. Three years prison for third parties who do not report homosexuality to police within 24 hours. Seven years for defending the rights of homosexuals. This bill is a project of the local branch of the US group The Family.

UK: Trans persons in transition will be allowed to buy a second ID card.

The Netherlands, the UK and elsewhere: Machines introduced at airports that can see your genitals under your clothes.

News Media & Bookshops

Window Media LCC, the largest publisher of LGBT newspapers (including the Washington Blade and Southern Voice) and websites in the US, closed down.

Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York and Out Word Bound Book Store in Indianapolis and Librairie Serge et Real in Montreal closed.

The art director, graphic designer and most of the writers at the Chicago Free Press left the gay publication Monday after the company stopped paying its employees, according to Matt Simonette, who also left his position as editor.

25 December 2009

Domingos, son of a black female slave and a white father, was raised in Lisbon. He was sometimes called Rocha, the name of his owner.

He made a living as a dancer, and was known as Domingos of the Dance. The dances were known as those of the fanchonos, sometimes the dances of the woman, as the participants were cross-dressed.

In 1621 he was arrested by the Holy Inquisition. Two priests, two married men, two lay bachelors and a free mulatto gave evidence of sex with Domingos from when he was 15. They testified that he was notoriously feminine in manner, and usually but not always the passive partner in sex. Domingos did not confess.

He was passed to the secular authorities, and strangled and burnt at an Auto da Fé in Lisbon.

There is no record of what happened to his sexual partners, nor whether his owner was compensated or accused.

23 December 2009

Evgeniia Fedorovna M. was expelled from school for refusing to wear a skirt. Her father accommodated her by educating her at home and she wrote the external gymnasium examinations. She was orphaned in 1915 and from then presented as male.

Evgenii worked for the Cheka during the Revolution as a political instructor, took part in searches of monasteries, and in operations against bandits in the southern provinces. During this time he also got his identity papers changed to male.

In 1922, the Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie (GPU, the successor of the Cheka) posted him to a provincial town, and he courted and officially married “S”, a female postal worker. Initially “S” did not doubt that Evgenii was a man, but rumours reached her and Evgenii admitted as much to her. Local authorities charged him with a ‘crime against nature’. However the Commissariat for Justice recognized the marriage as legal because it was ‘concluded by mutual consent’.

“S” had an affair and a child with a co-worker, which Evgenii legally adopted. However in 1925 the GPU regiment was transferred to Moscow. Evgenii abandoned his wife and child to follow, but was fired after arrival.

He didn’t adapt to civilian life. He started drinking, was promiscuous with woman, and took a second wife. In 1926 he was arrested for impersonating bureaucrats and party members for profit, and for disorderly conduct.

This led to his being examined by Dr Edelshtein of the Moscow Health Department’s Bureau for the Study of the Personality of the Criminal and Criminality. Throughout all this, Evgenii maintained his presentation as male. Edelshtein did not attempt a “cure”, but did get him to write a short autobiography that was included in the author’s article in Prestupnik i prestupnost.

Ova lived in Berlin and was a regular MC at gay street parties. In 1990 she publicized violence against queers. In 1997 she managed a program on 100 years of gay movement at the Berlin Academy of Arts.

In the 1998 election she stood for the Bundestag and received 534 votes.

She had been HIV+ since 1992. She was active in Act UP, with Aids charities, marijuana legalization, legal rights for prostitutes and transgender visibility.

She died of lymph cancer. In the last year of her life she promoted for a memorial for gays persecuted under the Nazis. The memorial was erected in 2008.

17 December 2009

Maria Teresinha Gomes was born on the island of Madeira. She ran away from home at 16, and made her way to Lisbon. Her parents gave her up for dead.

Maria transitioned to Tito Anibal da Paixao Gomes.

He had a general’s uniform made by a tailor for carnival in 1974. He gave out that he was a real general, and was occasionally seen in uniform. He also gave out that he was a lawyer and an employee at the US embassy.

A nurse, Joaqina Costa, shared his house his house for 15 years. Using this authority, he persuaded neighbours to trust him with their investments.

In 1992 he was arrested for fraud and his original gender was revealed. However he presented as male at his trial. Costa testified that she had never doubted that he was a man. Other witnesses still addressed him as ‘general’.

He was given a suspended three-year sentence. He retreated to a remote village and lived in poverty until his death.

Tito Gomes is in both the English and Spanish Wikipedias under his pre-transition name. This is also true of Charlotte Bach. For whatever reason there is no entry in the Portuguese Wikipedia under either of Gomes' name.

16 December 2009

David, a heterosexual transvestite, had been in and out of prison several times.

After shooting a policeman when interrupted during a burglary in 1983, he became one of the most wanted criminals in Britain. After a chase across London, Martin was supposedly shot in Earls Court, but it turned out to be the wrong man.

Martin was arrested shortly afterwards, but hung himself in prison before coming to trial. The story was filmed as a television movie in 1994.

*Not the Scottish, nor the English, nor the Nebraska politician, nor the poet, nor the Governor of New South Wales, nor the musician, nor the gymnast, nor any of the footballers, nor the Texas axe-murderer.

12 December 2009

Murry Pickford of Boston was deaf-and-dumb. She worked a drag act with pigeons that she insisted were doves.

In 1947, when female impersonation was banned in Boston at the instigation of the Catholic Archbishop, she went to the officials and pleaded that because of her disability, she had no other way to make a living. She was issued a special license, and was the only drag queen then working in Boston.

09 December 2009

William Smith worked in Queensland as a farm labourer, drover, railway navvy and cane cutter in the 1920s. He obtained 851 acres of land, but lost it and his cattle after a severe drought. He returned to labouring and moved with the seasonal farm work.

In 1928 he rode into New South Wales. He took employment at the Waterside Estates. He agreed to a pay cut in the middle of a drought on agreement of higher wages afterwards. The drought broke in March 1929 but from then on he was not paid at all. He quit in May, and in June took legal action claiming £39 12s 3d.

Thomas Waters, the employer, first avoided the claim by transferring the property to his wife, and declaring bankruptcy, and then by claiming that William Smith was a woman. Smith gave interviews to a few newspapers in which he admitted that he might not be male. He was admired as a “plucky Sydney girl” trying to survive.

The first court case was on 28 August 1929 and Matilda Waters, now the owner of the farm, made a counter claim of £45 12s 3d for the keep of Smith and his horse. The defence solicitor pursued the argument that Smith was a woman based on the newspapers articles. Smith conceded that he he might be a ‘half-and-half’ or a hermaphrodite. The agreed wages had been at a male rate.

There were several adjournments and the second hearing was heard on 13 November. A doctor testified that Smith was a woman but with the muscular development of a man and capable of doing physical work as well as a man.

Evidence was also admitted through cross-examination that Thomas Waters had a previous conviction of obtaining £350 through false pretences, was a declared bankrupt and had been committed for trial on two charges of false pretences. The magistrate criticized Smith as “not an entirely truthful witness”, but but awarded him the full amount claimed plus £1 5s 3d cost. The counter claim was denied.

07 December 2009

Enzo Anderson was born and raised in Toronto by Italian-immigrant parents. He graduated as a civil engineer in 1988, and worked as a supervisor at a concrete manufacturer.
At weekends he hung out with drag queens in Toronto’s gay village. When he was laid off, she became Enza and worked at a gay bar. She started calling herself ‘Supermodel’ although she has never walked a runway.

In 1998 she was on the cover of the Toronto Sun giving the then Toronto mayor, Mel Lastman, a sloppy kiss at the end of Pride. Two years later she ran against him for the office of mayor and came in third. In 2002 she ran for the leadership of the homophobic Canadian Alliance Party (previously the Reform Party and now the Conservative Party). Stephen Harper (now Prime Minister) won, and Anderson had to drop out because she was not raising enough money. In 2003 she ran against the city incumbent in the Toronto downtown ward, and came second.

In the same year, she had breast enhancement, charging it to her credit card.

She got herself a job writing for the free daily, Metro, by cold-calling the Toronto editor and reminding her of her political runs. She profiles Toronto’s party scene, attending 200 parties a year, and also profiles transit users. She also contributes to Fab and to Xtra.

She has done volunteer work with AIDS and gay youth charities, and was on the Police Liaison Committee.

05 December 2009

Beth transitioned to female in her late teens. She became a hippy singer/ songwriter, sometimes using the name Mustang Sally, and antiwar activist. One of her songs, “Teen Love” was a doo-wop lesbian love ballad.

She was the first woman under 21 to be an officer in the pioneering lesbian organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, where her transition was known, and where after a heated controversy, she had been accepted. In 1972, she was vice-president of the San Francisco branch.

Bev Jo, who had been a friend of Beth’s at college just before she transitioned, and, who was now active in the lesbian separatist Gutter Dykes Collective, accused the adolescent Beth of sexual harassment. Beth was was expelled from the Daughters for not being woman-born.

In 1973, Beth was one of the organizers West Coast Lesbian Conference held at the University of California, Los Angeles, and had played benefits to help finance it. However the Conference split over whether Elliot should be allowed to perform. The Gutter Dykes protested the presence of a ‘man’. Two-thirds of the women present voted to allow Beth to remain, and she performed as had been arranged, but she left after the performance. The keynote speaker, the heterosexually married Robin Morgan, incorporated the protests into her speech the next day, and referred to Beth as a ‘male transvestite’ and as a ‘rapist’.

Beth was also a founding member of Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, an activist in the California Democratic Party, a Director of the California Committee for Sexual Law Reform, the lobbying organization that won repeal of California’s sodomy laws in 1975.

She put out an album, Kid, Have You Rehabilitated Yourself? but the women’s music distribution channels were closed to her. In the 1980s she played bass for the all-women new wave band Satin Food Stamps; in the 1990s she was in the dykeabilly The Bucktooth Varmints with Anderson Toone; she did backing tracks for the drag king musical Hillbillies on the Moon, which again featured Anderson Toone. Her recent CD, Buried Treasure contains the tracks from Kid, Have You Rehabilitated Yourself?, some Satin Food Stamps tracks and some others (listen to previews of it at www.cdbaby.com/cd/bethelliott).

Beth was blacklisted by lesbian publishers, and was still traumatized by the 1973 events, until 1985 when she was profiled in Telewoman with a pseudonym and no photographs. This eventually became the book, Mirrors, but that took another decade. Bev Jo denounced Beth in 1985 and again in 1992, and this contributed to the decision to issue the book as 'told to Geri Nerrick'. The 2011 re-issue of Mirrors clarifies that Geri and Beth are the same person.

Beth has been a writer for a variety of publications including a weekly column for three and a half years for the Bay Area Reporter. She has also written for off our backs and FrontPage Magazine. She has recently written lesbian science fiction.

Beth is a keen softball player and hiker, and has traveled the world chasing and photographing solar eclipses. She is also the historian and genealogist for her long-time California family, which finally accepted her back.

*Not the artist, nor the other singer with the same name, nor the romance novelist.

03 December 2009

On 5th November 2009, Destiny Lauren aged 29, was found strangled in her flat in Kentish Town in northern London. She was rushed to hospital but died shortly afterwards.

She was pre-op and worked as a prostitute. Whether we classify her as a transsexual or as a prostitute, deaths like this are far too common.

Destiny had an interesting although rather sad family nexus, that most newspapers, with the exception of the Hampstead and Highgate Express, her local newspaper, did not pay any attention to.

Elizabeth and Paul Hill, brother and sister, were raised in Belfast, but moved to London.

On 5 October 1974 The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated two bombs at two pubs, The Horse and Groom and The Seven Stars, both in Guildford, Surrey, and both popular with British Army soldiers. Four soldiers and one civilian were killed; a further sixty-five were wounded. Under pressure to come up with results, the police arrested Paul Hill and three others (Gerry Conlon, Patrick Armstrong, Carole Richardson). They were convicted and imprisoned. Elizabeth Hill was also questioned and held at the police station for a week.

Elizabeth married a Mr Samuels, and they had four sons, including Justin who felt that he should have been a girl, and grew up to be Destiny. Elizabeth endured the strain of campaigning for 15 years for her brother’s release.

In 1990, The Guildford Four were released. Their convictions were overturned on appeal in that they were based on confessions extracted by torture, and evidence of innocence had been held back by the police. In addition, at the trial of the Balcombe Street Four, the IRA men instructed their lawyers to draw attention to the fact that innocent people were serving time for the Guildford bombings.

After release, in 1993, Paul Hill married Mary Courtney Kennedy, the fifth child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy of Massachusetts. They legally separated in 2006.

Elizabeth committed suicide in November 2005, at the flat that she shared with her daughter, Destiny. Destiny, was well-known in London’s transsexual scene, and was an acquaintance of Boy George. She continued to live in her mother’s flat, until she was found strangled.

Leon Fyle, 23, was convicted for the murder and jailed for 21 years in September 2010,
but the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction the next April, and he was again found guilty at the
retrial. He stole £350 found her and spend £250 of it on two sex workers at a brothel in Kings Cross the same night. Det Insp Liz Baker pointed out that Fyle never showed any remorse.

01 December 2009

George Harris Jr was born in Bronxville, Westchester, New York. His family moved to Florida and lost their money in real estate.

On return to New York, child George worked as a model in commercials, and at Caffe Cino and other off-off-Broadway theaters. At 13 he left home to live with an older man, with the understanding of his parents. One of his contacts was Jack Smith, the avant-garde filmmaker who was already cross-dressing his actors.

At 17, George had an offer to drive to California, and arrived in San Francisco in time for the Hippy thing. He grew his hair, became vegetarian and wore robes and headdresses. At midnight on December 31, 1969, The Palace, let him, as Hibiscus, and several others put on a show and the Cockettes were born. They put on periodic reviews using castoff junk for their props, and dressing in drag and as whatever they liked. They attracted the attention of celebrities, and were featured in articles in Rolling Stone and Paris Match.

One night after a performance he came home to find that his apartment building had burned down. He took a break, but on return found that he had been voted out of the group, and that shows were no longer free. He founded a new group, Angels of Light, which did their first performance in Grace Cathedral before the police evicted them. Allen Ginsburg did his first drag with the group and was was Hibiscus’s lover for a while.

Hibiscus left the group and returned to his family in New York, and started an East Coast version of the Angels. They were discovered by Swiss choreographer, Maurice Bejart who financed a European tour.

He died of AIDS at age 33.

Mark Thompson. “Children of Paradise: A Brief History of Queens”. In Mark Thompson (ed). Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987: 61-8.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.